The weekend trip was amazing! The drive to Bozeman wasn’t too long, about 3 hours, and passed fairly quickly. We arrived with time to have a nice dinner and get to bed not obscenely late, though we did leave later than hoped.
Bozeman is where Californians who watched Yellowstone visit or move to. Because of that, it also supports higher prices and things are significantly more expensive there. Dinner and a few drinks was ~$100 but the steak was delicious. The hotel was lower quality than I’d usually take for the price, but it was also back to school weekend for the college so there weren’t many options to choose from.
One thing I will say, I wish more hotels put grab bars in the standard showers. I don’t need a fully accessible room, but my balance issues necessitate the grab bars. The fully accessible showers are usually walk-in and often make a slippery mess on the floor.
We spent Saturday at the Ren Faire, and it was surprisingly good for one that is so new. It was relatively small, at least compared to the ones in California, but they did a great job with it. Several hours later we left with lighter wallets and a few bags of things – I got ambushed by a beard bead gal who’s cunning and charm had me adorned and walking away with several purchased items.
Now on to the main reason for the trip… the Metal + Mozart show!
Heavy metal thunder…
The metal band performing was Galvanist, who classify themselves as “progressive doom metal.” Not really my style of metal, but I did notice a lot of their prog bits during their performance.
My wife is acquainted with their guitarist, so we arrived early to meet up before the show. We picked up a copy of their debut CD and learned they will be releasing a vinyl version later this year. I will be scooping one of those up to add to my wall of signed albums for sure!
The show itself was interesting – performed in three acts. The first act was just the dance troupe, the second with a pianist at first then with a Rammstein soundtrack – the third was with the live band, and what I was most looking forward to. They opened with a single song on their own, but soon the dancers appeared on stage with them. It was about 40 minutes of music and dance before the show concluded.
After the show, we hung out to meet the rest of the band and visit a bit. My wife got the rest of the autographs on her CD and we all talked for a bit. We ended up at a local dive bar with them and I chatted up the bassist. We bonded over bass, beards, and discussing the rise of the Bay Area thrash metal scene and some obscure musicians from the era. I commented that he had the “hair circle” down perfect – a headbanging technique taught to me by a 20-year-old Rob Cavestany (of Death Angel) when I was 15, to keep your hair from getting caught up in your strings – and he laughed saying it keeps the hair out of the strings, but can still get caught in the headstock.
We stayed at the bar for about an hour chatting, but wanted to get some decent sleep for the trip home. All in all it was a great weekend, and I look forward to seeing them perform again. I mentioned that Doom Metal isn’t really my jam, but these guys are really tight and performed quite well – I am certain they will do well in their genre of metal.
What a long strange trip it’s been…
The drive back was uneventful, though we did hit a bookstore on the way home. We had a great time and have a couple weeks before our next trip. We also have Iron Maiden in LA towards the end of September so we have some travel in our plans.
Anyhow, I have some recording to do – and I posted a bunch of photos of the performance in the gallery…
Song of the day: Stiff Upper Lip by AC/DC
Leave a Reply